Turkey describes ANZAC accounts of genocide as 'fabrications'

MARK COLVIN: The Turkish government is using the centenary celebrations at Gallipoli to try to shut down criticism of the Armenian genocide.

Turkey's threatened to ban outspoken politicians from the commemoration in Turkey in 2015.

In May this year the New South Wales parliament passed a motion recognising the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides at the hands of the Ottoman Turk regime.

Turkey's Consul General in New South Wales says the parliament is hijacking the special bond that exists between the two countries.

He describes eyewitness accounts of atrocities at the time by ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Army Corps) prisoners of war as fabrications.

This special report from our defence correspondent Michael Brissenden.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Mythology that now surrounds ANZAC has become all consuming and as we prepare for the centenary of the Gallipoli landing's in 2015 some fear the legend and the centenary Gallipoli industry that's sprung up around it may obscure another important commemoration.

By the time the First World War came around the hatred and animosity between the Muslims and the Christians in the region knows as Anatolia was thousands of years old.

But just days before the Gallipoli landing, and 30 years before the term genocide was even coined, the Ottoman's, in the dying days of empire, began instigating a final solution.

Colin Tatz is a world renowned genocide scholar.

COLIN TATZ: There is categorical evidence from scholarship around the world that what happened between 1915 and 1922 was a genocide of the Armenians, the Pontian Greeks and the Assyrian communities, to the extent of roughly one half of their total population

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: According to most estimates more 1.5 million Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrian's were wiped out in mass evacuations, forced marches and executions. But describing what happened as a genocide has been vigorously and consistently opposed by the Turks as a one-sided view of history. And the modern Turkish state has lobbied hard to prevent any official recognition of the term genocide.

It's a campaign that's been remarkably effective; only 21 countries have passed resolutions to that effect. The British and the US governments haven't and neither has the Australian Federal Parliament.

But the South Australian parliament has, and in May this year the New South Wales parliament unanimously endorsed a motion put forward by the Upper House member and Christian campaigner Fred Nile to formally recognise what's widely referred to as the Armenian genocide.

FRED NILE: And in fact it's interesting, when Adolf Hitler planned to have the genocide of the Jews there were some questions asked; and he said himself don't worry who remembers the Armenian genocide - who remembers it? He said that.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Fred Nile has just returned from a tour of Armenia with a cross-party delegation

FRED NILE: The fact that I moved that motion and the parliament voted for it, has made us heroes of Armenia.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: But the response from the Turks has been blistering.

GULSEREN CELIK: These people want to hijack this very special bond between the Turkish-ANZAC spirit. This is their target.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Gulseren Celik is the Turkish Consul General in Sydney. She has written a lengthy and angry response to the New South Wales parliament motions condemning what she describes as the baseless allegations of genocide.

And the Turkish state has hit back hard too. A foreign ministry statement says the proponents of this motion will no longer be welcome at the Gallipoli commemorations. And the local Gallipoli council has also made it clear that critics will not be welcome to the centenary celebrations in 2015.

So the Premier and members of the parliament will not be welcome at the 2015 celebrations?

GULSEREN CELIK: Well I think one should read the press statement of our ministry carefully.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well the press statement says they won't be welcome. So one would assume they won't be given the visas to go?

GULSEREN CELIK: Yes.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: In her letter to the New South Wales parliament the Turkish consul general has also dismissed the other significant Australian link to the Armenian genocide, the evidence of Australian POWs (Prisoners of War) who were at the time imprisoned in Armenian churches and villages that had been emptied of residents.

Some describe seeing Turkish soldiers using whips to hurt Armenian women and children on to sheep trailers on trains. Others, including Thomas White, who later became a politician and minister in the Lyons government, describes passing columns of Armenians being marched through the desert to certain death. He writes "of roads littered with dead bodies".